As many of you learning to speak English, you often have a problem understanding English that is spoken to you. When we learn English, we get used to read English, write English, but we don't really get used to listen and understand English. This is the reason that many of you fail to speak English very well. Just think, it is really annoying to listen to someone saying something and you completely have no idea about what they are talking about.
Why is understanding English difficult?
# Reason 01 - Pronounced English is not always equal to written English.
The way people pronounce a word is not the way they write that word.
To understand this better, let's take the word LOVE.
When pronouncing the word LOVE, the ending two letters 'VE' will become silent and 'F' is the sound you would hear at the end. If you are not used to listening to too much English, you will not be able to get this word. So, it will become difficult for you to understand the pronounced word.
# Reason 02 - The same letter can be pronounced differently in different words.
Pronunciation of a letter can be different in an another word.
To understand this better, let's take the words Apple & Auspicious, Elephant & Eat, Ice & Italy.
By reading about words, you would see the difference in pronunciation.
# Reason 03 - Unclear pronunciation.
When you listen to a native speaker, you will come across this scenario of unclear pronunciation. It is not because what they speak is unclear, it is because they used to join words together while speaking.
To understand this better, if a native speaker had to speak these sentences, they would pronounce them in the following ways joining words together.
The sentence Do you want to go? would be pronounced like D'ya wanna go?
Also, I am going to take shower would be pronounced like am gonna take shower.
So this is one of the reasons that you don't understand spoken English.
# Reason 04 - You are not listening enough.
The another reason that you can't understand English is that you don't listen to enough English. To get used to a language, it is important to listen to people who speak that language.
Just think about your mother tongue, and how did you become fluent in your mother tongue? Of course, when you were a baby, you first listened to your mother and then you listened to others as well. So the same theory applies to any language. For that you don't want to become a baby, but you have to start listening to people who speak that particular language.
How to improve your listening skills?
Take a habit of listening to English regularly. Practice the right way of listening. Listen to general topics, listen to specific details and pay attention to individual words. Now we are in this modern world, you can do these at your fingertips.
If you don't understand a word and you don't get the idea of a sentence, you have to understand that it might take a while for you to understand some words. It really takes time to understand certain pronunciations and get used to them.